By nature of where I live, I have friends who are farmers who have virtually no cash earnings and no savings. They pay almost nothing in taxes. I don’t think anyone has that much of a problem with that. Many would agree that people with no earnings ought to pay no taxes.

But these friends are workers. The capitalist equivalent are businesses and individuals who have assets that don’t earn anything in aggregate. Think, for example, of most airlines until a few years ago.

Should an airline that shuffles around millions of people each year yet earns $0 pay taxes? I would argue that they owe no income tax. They ought to pay payroll taxes and sales taxes and airport fees and fuel taxes and state taxes, but I’m OK with their income tax bill being $0 as long as they in fact haven’t actually earned anything.

Let’s pretend that our airline does this for two years:

year 1 earnings: $0 year 2 earnings: $0

Presumably, if we’re still OK with such a company not paying income taxes in one year, nothing changes when we’re talking about two years or even 18. This company ought to pay all its other taxes, but it is legally and morally OK to not pay income taxes as long as it has no income.

But really, this sort of result is pretty rare. You’re more likely to see something like this:

year 1 earnings: -$1,000,000 (a loss) year 2 earnings: $1,000,000

What should this company pay in taxes? A lot of people would argue that they owe taxes in year 2—the year in which it had positive earnings. I, and the tax system as I understand it, disagree. The company’s net earnings are $0 over the two years. There is little reason for this company to pay an income tax while the airline above does not. What ought to matter is the total amount the company earns, not the year in which the amounts are earned.

There are important limits to this, but the tax system is intentionally designed around this basic intuition. If you’ve ever realized a loss of more than $3000 in the stock market, you’ve probably had the opportunity to similarly “carry over” your losses to the next year to offset your income in the next year. Or maybe you refused on moral grounds and judge those who accept what TurboTax does for them automatically a tax cheat.

[O]ne thing working in Trump’s favor is that he sets up most of his business enterprises as limited liability corporations and partnerships.

As a result, he would have been allowed to apply a loss from any business he actively managed to offset the taxable profits he earned from his other businesses.

This is exactly how it should be. You should pay income taxes on your income. If your income is spread across three investments, you need to add the income from each investment and pay taxes on the grand total. This is not a dastardly scheme. It’s literally the simplest, most intuitive way to pay your taxes. It’s the same thing done by Berkshire Hathaway that people loudly commend for paying its share of taxes, and it’s followed by me when I add up the income from my army of interest-bearing checking accounts. And it’s what every tax filing program out there will do for you without asking.

In addition, as a real estate magnate, Trump has a slew of other completely legal tax breaks available to him.

Among them, he is allowed to deduct the interest on loans used to finance the purchase and development of properties. He can deduct the operating expenses and maintenance costs of his properties.

Sorry. This isn’t a real-estate magnate thing. If you sell $100,000 in donuts, you get to deduct all the costs associated with making, distributing, marketing, and financing your donuts. Actually, deduct everything that is an expense to your donut-making operation. If that’s $90,000, then you only have to pay income taxes on the $10,000 left over. This isn’t because of the donut lobby. It’s because that’s what income is; it’s what’s left over after your expenses.

Donald Trump seems to be an awful person. He shouldn’t be president. But there is nothing I’ve yet seen in the media about his taxes that seems more sophisticated or troubling than what you’d find in any Robert Kiyosaki book.

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Vikram Bath is the pseudonym of a former business school professor living in the United States with his wife, daughter, and dog. (Dog pictured.) His current interests include amateur philosophy of science, business, and economics. Tweet at him at @vikrambath1.

Well he’d still have managed to lose a colossal amount of money and be a cretin in various other ways, but I’ll agree that if he released his returns and this turns out to be on the level and there’s nothing else hidden in there, we liberals ought to let up on the issue. I put the odds of this being the case at slim and none, and slim left town a week ago.Report

I’m trying to imagine a single Clinton voter who would change their vote from Clinton to Trump based upon any possible tax return of Trump’s.

“I was going to vote for Hillary but when I saw Trump’s tax returns for 2010-2015, I realized the following things…”

I’m failing. I’m failing to come up with a possible tax return that might convert someone. I’m failing to come up with a person who would have their minds changed by either the contents of the tax return I’m failing to come up with *OR* someone who has the tax return being released as the main thing keeping them from trusting Trump.

Same for people who are likely to stay home unless Trump releases his taxes.

Is there anyone out there who *CAN* imagine this person? If you are someone who can imagine this person, can you describe him or her to me?Report

Jay, Romney’s tax returns, that in all probability recorded him hiding money in overseas tax shelters, would have shifted votes.

Trump? Anyone who cared about tax returns also cared about his sex scandals.

What would shift this election? Trump gets a few interns to start talking about the First Husband-to-be. Because, then, my dear, it’s game on. “Who’s the bigger mysogynistic bastard — the one with his … down a young girl’s throat, or the one who can’t keep his bloody mouth shut?”

Wikileaks is trying, gotta give them credit, but their October Surprise just got Trumped by Hillary’s team.Report

Your clinton hatred is bordering on manic lately(forever), and I just want you to know its going to be ok. Real hillary is far less scary than the mad bomber crazy cackling bitch you have in your head.

Madame president is going to be fine. Ive watched the Clinton circus my whole life, seen the whole show. She’s very much going to go where the party does. Move the party if you want her to be less hawkish.

But watching her displaying actual policy knowledge and proposals with spelled out math and trouncing cheeto jesus? So priceless the only thing could top would be B. Barry BAMZ doing it. I need to smoke after the debates, I’ve enjoyed it so much.Report

” Ive watched the Clinton circus my whole life, seen the whole show.” Then you haven’t been watching terribly closely these last few weeks.

I’ll repeat, in case you haven’t read — I do know someone who works for Clinton — who has bet against her and had her pay up publically (I can share the news article if you want). He says that Clinton has gone off the deepend and… isn’t getting better in a hurry.

You… enjoyed the debates? Holy… Obama’s debates were fun, because trolling. Actual intelligent planning went into flummoxing McCain enough that he stuck his tongue out. This time round? Meh. Meh. Meh.

I mean, I know someone who works politics sometimes (aforementioned guy “who works for Clinton”) — and he didn’t even bother watching.Report

So you’re telling me that even though they’re incompetent, it’s still a wise decision to invest in them if I want to minimize my taxes. (BAM! goes the inventory. I have the news report on that one too).Report

Tax management can be a burdensome distraction. It’s only one of several considerations when making most business decisions, and if you put it foremost, you are likely to do something stupid just for the sake of saving (or more likely, simply delaying) a tax paymentReport

Seems like just driving over state lines to avoid sales tax is enough: if you’re driving a mile for a big ticket item, do it, but if you’re driving 40 for a stick of gum, you’ve made an error in your calculation.Report

The gas price thing is just weird. People will fight tooth and nail to save $0.03 a gallon on a 10 gallon fill up even though they wouldn’t think twice about blowing $0.30 on convenience just about everywhere else. There’s something about gasoline that gets people really wound up.

I think it’s the same psychological phenomenon that makes people think that retail gas prices and inflation are the same thing. Something about the prices being really volatile and super visible as that little meter ticks upward.Report

I remember watching a show about people are take frugality to the extreme. One guy road miles on his bike a day to raid laundromats for dryer lint (it burns well for heat or cooking) and any change he can find. What he didn’t seem to take into consideration was all the calories he was burning and the additional food costs he incurred to make up for them, which almost certainly outpaced the money he “earned”.Report

California does the use tax thing as well. It probably says something about me that I actually do at least make an effort track and report out of state purchases (at least big-ish ones that are worth tracking).Report

I’m thinking of a welfare mother who takes a full time job, but works as an independent contractor.

Her contracting company is incorporated in the Bahamas and her paychecks get issued to the corporation, leaving her wage-free, and eligible for the full maximum welfare benefit.

She sends her strapping young buck of a son out to buy T-bone steaks, and conservatives everywhere cheer and admire her for the cleverness in exploiting the tax system, and she is on the cover of Forbes.Report

I’m perfectly OK with counting business losses against future business income–it would be crazy for it to be any other way. But I’m trying to figure out if there’s any way for all of these things to be true at once:

1) Trump is a great business man. 2) Trump personally lost $916 million–not the total of all of his investment partners but his own share of the loss. 3) The scale of his personal investment was large enough that he could lose $916 million in 1995 but small enough that over the next 17 years, he never ended up back in the black. 4) Trump is fabulously, fabulously wealthy and has way more money now than he did in the early 90s.

I can imagine stores that make some of these things true, but I can’t make them all fit together sensibly. I also can’t imagine any more of his financial details coming out would make him look any better than he does right now. There’s basically zero chance that he can be pressured into showing us more. It would certainly not benefit him.Report

tf, Trump isn’t fabulously wealthy, and has tried to sue the press for (accurately) calling him a millionaire instead of a billionaire. He does TONS of stuff on the company account (like his “corporate jet”). It’s not his money, really.

He’s not a great businessman. He’s not even a great swindler (see the people doing Solar Fucking Roadways. Now that’s a swindle. Even has a bagholder).Report

That’s roughly how I’ve sized him up. He seems to be nothing more than a brazen con man who has parlayed his inheritance and his father’s influence into an opulent lifestyle and sustained that lifestyle by licensing the image of it to a string of failed companies.

I don’t see any indication of great business acumen or even a realistic assessment of his own place in the world. His run for office appears to be a vanity project at best, a financial con on the donors at worst, and in the middle, just a cynical trick for pumping up a declining image–the only thing he has to sell.

My big question is whether after all is said and done, he makes more money because he’s more famous among easily conned average Joes or less money because he has burned his bridges to the types of financial heavy hitters you need to get big capital projects off the ground. Rumors of him starting a media company don’t seem particularly crazy. The iron is hot–he’ll have the disaffected crazies clamoring for the echoiest echo chamber available and a lot of name recognition among them. He could probably do to Fox News what Fox News did to actual news.Report

That’s my guess too. A big part of the Trump money machine is Trump name recognition combined with Trump mystique. This was good for name recognition, but unfortunately for Trump, not so great for the Trump mystique.Report

IIRC, a corporation can go for a long time without showing a profit. But if I act as a small custom software firm, I have to show a profit in three of each five years or the IRS classes it as a hobby and I lose the ability to deduct depreciation and other business expenses. (That would be US tax code. Don’t know how other countries might do things.)Report

I think I agree with your basic point, that tax-loss carryforward is a reasonable thing, and it’s reasonable to take advantage of it.

Here’s the thing – I do not remotely believe that Donald Trump personally recognized losses of $916 million in one year. I think he gamed the system in a way that the system does not want to be gamed, but cannot be fully programmed to reject.

In online gaming, we call this an exploit.

Here’s the most likely scenario – he personally guaranteed a bunch of junk bonds to finance his casinos. He couldn’t make enough revenue to cover the interest on those bonds, so he defaulted, and sent the corporate entities to bankruptcy court. The creditors get real clear that even though he guaranteed them that money, he doesn’t have it, and they won’t get it. They are probably going to get only $.01 on the dollar.

If this is what actually happens, the rest of the loans are forgiven, and show up as income on his personal taxes, and this wipes out most of the loss, and he gets a loss of $9.16 million – still big, but a lot, lot smaller. [Vik: moved decimal point per Jay’s request]

So, now Trump comes along and offers them a deal – He’ll give them $.011 on the dollar if they allow him to buy the debt with an offshore corp. The creditors are happy to take a little more than they thought they would get, so they say yes. The corp holds the debt and doesn’t forgive it, so that doesn’t show up as forgiveness on his taxes. But since DRT controls the company, (The most likely corp is an entity called DRT Enterprises, which was formed in 1995 offshore), the company never pursues collection. In the tax world this is known as “effective debt forgiveness”, and they don’t like it not being taxed, but they have issues with making that stick. An exploit.

There are other scenarios where he used an unintended loophole in law concerning realtors – a loophole that Hillary Clinton voted to close while she was in the Senate.

I have no problem using tax law to my advantage, when I am doing the thing the tax law seems intended to encourage. For instance, I buy tax-free municipal bonds. The reason tax law lets municipalities issue these bonds is to encourage people like me to buy them. So that’s not an issue.

And loss carry-forward is the same way. I think there was something darker going on here.

Furthermore, I feel fine speculating about what he did, since he could always shut me up and make me look stupid by releasing his tax returns, which every candidate in the last 40 years has done. I sort of agree that it’s too late in the game to do that now, but that’s his problem, not mine.Report

If this is what actually happens, the rest of the loans are forgiven, and show up as income on his personal taxes, and this wipes out most of the loss, and he gets a loss of $91.6 million – still big, but a lot, lot smaller.

That should have been $9.16 million. Painful, but not remotely enough to wipe out earnings for two decades.Report

I’m going to point out again: There is no way on Earth Trump lost a billion dollars in 1995.

It didn’t happen. He did not personally lose one billion dollars in a single year.

Whether he used a loophole, whether he did some fun stuff with debt and off-shore companies, whatever — that one billion he claimed as a personal loss was not, in fact, a personal loss. Legal or not, he made that a “personal loss” through some form of chicanery. That billion dollar loss was either not a billion dollars or it was a billion bucks of someone else’s money.

A billion dollar deduction in 1995 was “big corporation level”, not “individual”.Report

I wish were were in a year in which a dry academic discussion of the passive loss carry forward was a thing.

What has people riled up is not the concept of the passive loss, but the way it is clear that the tax code is a vehicle for special favors for the powerful, where the losses are socialized and the profits privatized.Report

Chip has it right. I think you are correct in a letter of the law kind of way but not spirit of the law.

As far as I know, most sustenance farmers do not have the lavish lifestyle of Donald Trump. They are not buying Brioni suits for thousands of dollars. They are not going around bragging about being ultra-rich business geniuses. This is what makes Trump’s not paying taxes so shocking to many.Report

Trump had a net worth of $X prior to 1994. After 1994, his net worth was $X-$960M. Until he pays federal income tax, his net worth would have to be below $X. Otherwise, he’d have earned more than he lost, giving him positive income and requiring him paying income tax.

This is missing the forest for the trees. It’s a commonly held view that people who make it big – especially those who inherited much of their wealth – should help those less fortunate. This isn’t a law but it is an expectation that speaks to a person’s moral character. Trump could have done that through charitable giving, but he has presented *no* such evidence and his Foundation (which is not a charity) is engaged in fraudulent activity. Trump could have done that by running an equitable business – rewarding his employees and doing right by his clients; but there is also abundant evidence that he stiffs people and throws around threats of malicious litigation. At the very least, Trump could have done it by paying a reasonable amount of his income in taxes; but this return (and his subsequent statements) suggests that he’s not doing that either. The point is not that this leak is – in and of itself – unseemly activity. The point is that it removes the last unknown through which he could demonstrate some kind of civic sacrifice.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

Ten Second News

Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.